


Leadership and Tactical Acumen

by regnantqueen



Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Based on my time in an activist group, F/F, Game: Watch Dogs: Legion, Gen, Lesbian Character, Nobody does drama like a bunch of leftists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29608938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regnantqueen/pseuds/regnantqueen
Summary: Juli Vargas is an unofficial leader of London's newly-rebuilt DedSec cell, emphasis on "unofficial." DedSec doesn't do hierarchies. Juli prefers that, really; she believes in it. That doesn't mean she doesn't want to throttle her teammates just a bit when this bunch of queer women and radicals start bickering instead of saving the world.
Kudos: 3





	Leadership and Tactical Acumen

Running an insurgency was complicated, and lesbian social dynamics were complicated, and the two of them together were threatening to annilhilate Juli Vargas’ sense of chill, just utterly wipe it from the universe. 

DedSec 2.0, as their trusty AI Bagley referred to the new cell operating in London after the Zero-Day attack, had been active for only six months. They’d been extremely effective. But since Sabine and Bagley had seen fit to make Kathy Nemeth, a tough-as-nails woman who happened to be a huge lesbian, their first new operative, recruitment had tended in a certain direction. And now the cell’s hookup graph looked like a graph of the Mandelbrot set. 

The briefing with Malik, DedSec’s new ex-SIRS whistleblower informant, went well, and everyone signed off the video call with a clear idea of their next objective: get inside SIRS headquarters and get operational details to flesh out Malik’s information. Adama, who Juli privately considered the cell’s best hacker, had been en route to join the briefing late and had re-routed; she was already at site and did some recon by peeping on their CCTV network. When her data came back via an upload to the cell’s shared server and a ping to the group chat, that’s when the trouble started.

Juli’s girlfriend Zhen started the trouble inadvertently. Looking through Adama’s recon with a frown, she looked up at the other women packed into the Safe House’s small meeting area. “Look’s like an infiltration job, right?”

Juli suppressed a grimace. Zhen was sweet, smart, amd logical, and she thought everyone was like her. She had no idea the grenade she’d just lobbed.   
  
Katherine Baranowski, 35 years old with a chiseled body and a weathered face that reflected her long career as a bare knuckle boxer, grinned. “Looks like you’re up, babe,” she said, grinning across the table at Nikhat.

Before Juli could get a word in, Nathalie Nikolov, tall and trans with a shock of green hair, sat forward. “It’s always Nikhat,” she said. “She’s too hot after that microdrone caper. There’s no way she hasn’t been flagged.”

“I can do it,” Nikhat said. She was pretty, dark-skinned and carefully coiffed and stylish, one of the most femme members of the cell out of her Albion Security uniform. She was always willing, but being an inside woman was hard, and they’d all seen it take a toll on her. Her Albion credentials and uniform were so useful that she’d seen more action than most of them, Juli included. 

But that wasn’t the only reason Nathalie spoke up, or at least, it wasn’t the reason she spoke up with that exasperated tone. The real reason was that Nikhat, beauty that she was, was hooking up casually with Katherine, Nathalie, and at least two other members of the cell (that Juli knew of). A good number of the girls had arrangements like that, and Juli had no problem with it if it was all on the up and up. Notably, neither Nathalie or Katherine had any problem with Maisie or Ismat, Nikhat’s other partners -- who were both looking mortified at the moment to see something touching their personal business aired so openly; bulky Maisie was clearly furious and slender Ismat’s eyes were wide with concern for Nikhat, caught in the middle of this. But they both had the maturity to keep their mouths closed even now. 

In contrast, Katherine and Nathalie had never hit it off and sharing Nikhat was obviously a frustration for both of them, and they made sure everyone knew it. 

Kathy Nemeth -- she was always Kathy, just as Katherine Baranowski was always Katherine -- made eye contact with Juli from where she sat on a folding chair across the coffee table. Kathy was the founding member of the new DedSec, recruited by Sabine and Bagley themselves; Juli was her third recruit, and somehow had joined her as unofficial matriarch, much to Juli’s chagrin sometimes. She wasn’t sure how it worked out that Leigh Ward, the first woman Kathy had recruited, got to sit scrolling her phone during meetings while everyone expected Juli to be involved with everything, but that’s how things were. Six months ago she’d had an entry-level job as a construction worker and she hadn’t organized as much as a bake sale in her life. Now, Kathy was the one she looked to for help herding the cats.    
  
“Kathy and I had an idea about that, actually,” she said. “SIRS is very different from a typical Albion facility, and…”   
  
“Nikhat got us into Albion HQ,” Katherine interrupted. “What, you don’t think she can handle SIRS?” 

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Juli backtracked. “Nikhat, you know I think you can handle just about anything. You’ve given more than most of us. But you shouldn’t have to do every single government infiltration.”    
  
“Gargereta’s credentials won’t get her into SIRS, and you know it. No offense,” Katherine said.    
  
“None taken,” Gargereta Hansen answered. She’d been a detective constable in the old Metropolitan Police. She and Nathalie got endless guff for being two trans women with practically identical haircuts, but where Nathalie was a firecracker Gargereta was usually a calming presence. Now, though, her tight-lipped response now clearly signalled that she had no interest in getting in the middle of this squabble. 

“You’re not wrong, Katherine,” Kathy said, chiming in to support Juli. “We want to bring someone new in.”    
  
“Someone new? You mean from SIRS?” Katherine laughed derisively. “Pull the other one.” 

“Your girlfriend is ex-Albion, love,” Fatma Solomon put in, voice dripping sarcasm, and now Kathy gave Juli a look of panic. Fatma was one of the newer recruits, a long-time anarchist activist with stitch-perfect street fashion and a chip on her shoulder about working with ex-Albion agents and ex-cops. A whole other tension in the group was coming to the fore. 

Juli saw nods around the room: Fatma’s girlfriend Noelle, who’d brought her in, Amy Patil who’d been recruited from a protest group in Camden, and Sally Lyons the drone expert. All new recruits, all passionate women who weren’t necessarily happy with DedSec as they found it. Now Gargereta looked annoyed, Nikhat looked hurt, and Nathalie and Katherine both raised their voices in Nikhat’s defense -- and then just as quickly turned on each other. 

“Children! Enough!” Zuzanna Szymanski slammed the coffee table, and miraculously, everyone shut up. She’d been an unusual recruit, a professional magician, and Juli had been skeptical at the time. The oldest member of DedSec 2.0 at 52, she’d proven an invaluable ally in these discussions even though she hadn’t done much field work.    
  
“This meeting’s dragging on forever,” she said, “and I don’t care who you have a beef with or who’s a class traitor or who’s sleeping with who! Juli’s the only one who’s actually talking about this damn job, so do your Auntie Zuzu a favor and shut the hell up!” 

There were a lot of unhappy faces, but in the silence that followed they all looked to Juli. 

“Thank you, Zuzanna,” she said. “I was just saying, we want to bring someone in from SIRS, preferably someone working their security. I’m going to ask Adama to scout recruits and give her authority to bring in who she sees fit.” She desperately wanted to head off a discussion about who would vet candidates, and Adama was well-liked by pretty much everyone. “Any questions?”   
  
No one spoke. “Alright. I’ll put the message out to Adama. Meeting adjourned.” 

* * *

Across town, Adama sat at a Starroger Coffee, sipping chai and blasting Lily Allen on her headphones while she waited for an update. She knew every minute that passed before she got a call back from Juli or Kathy was another minute of really pointless bickering she’d avoided. She wondered what it was this time: Nikhat’s girlfriends, Fatma’s counter-culture snobbery? Maybe Pam Gayle said something mean about someone’s outfit again.

Bagley spoke in her Optik all of a sudden. “You know, Adama,” he said, “you said that you were running late to the briefing, so it made sense for you to re-route to scout the target. But CCTV caught you sitting in King’s Cross Station as the briefing went forward, as several trains went by.”   
  
Adama grinned. “Yeah, Bags?”   
  
“Yes. Almost as though you were waiting in a central location on the transit system so you could go wherever you needed to avoid the briefing.” 

“Interesting notion. What’s your point?”

“I just wanted to note,” Bagley said, “apropos of nothing, that I respect your tactical acumen.” 

Adama grinned, and winked at the closest CCTV camera. Bagley was alright.

**Author's Note:**

> This was basically an excuse to formalize the fleeting headcanons I was forming about my all-female DedSec crew. The core of the idea came from working on an LGBTQ rights campaign and seeing firsthand how fierce the drama, both personal and political, can get.


End file.
